NCC 2017

5G WORKSHOP TUTORIALS PLENARY TALKS INVITED TALKS TECHNICAL PROGRAM CALL FOR PAPERS REGISTRATION FEEDBACK

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submission:
~~31 October 2016~~
15 November 2016 (HARD DEADLINE)
Decision notification:
~~16 January 2017~~
22 January 2017
Camera-ready submission:
31 January 2017

TECHNICAL CO-SPONSORS

SPONSORS-DIAMOND

National Instruments

SPONSORS-PLATINUM

SPONSORS-SILVER

TUTORIALS

MORNING SESSIONS:

Rajesh M. Hegde
IIT Kanpur

Title: Microphone Array Processing for Speech Enhancement and Source Separation Slides References

Abstract: Microphone array signal processing is widely being used for applications like speech source localization, separation and recognition. Various microphone array configurations which include linear, planar and three-dimensional (3-D) arrays, are being utilized for this purpose. Signal processing is performed in spatial domain with linear and planar microphone arrays. A spherical microphone array (SMA) additionally allows signal processing in spherical harmonics (SH) domain. In this tutorial, various methods for acoustic source localization, separation, and enhancement in spatial and spherical harmonics domain will be discussed. In this context, development of high resolution subspace-based method MUltiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC) will be detailed. Significance of phase of the MUSIC and hence group delay of MUSIC for resolving closely spaced sources with a minimal number of sensors will be presented. Utilization of these techniques in speech source localization, separation, and enhancement will also be discussed. A simple speech activated camera steering system development for meeting room applications will also be presented. Linear and planar array suffer from front-back and up-down ambiguity respectively. Spherical Microphone Array (SMA) can localize a source anywhere in space with no spatial ambiguity. The SMA can make use of spatial or spherical harmonics (SH) domain signal processing. However, signal processing in spherical harmonics domain provides exclusive advantages like dimensionality reduction, frequency smoothing and ease of beampattern steering over spatial domain signal processing. Both far-field and near-field source localization problems will be addressed in the tutorial. The MUSIC, MUSIC-GD, and MVDR method will be utilized for near and far field source localization in SH domain. A search-free algorithm, SH-root- MUSIC will also be presented for azimuth only estimation of far-field sources. Design of radial filters for localization of coincident near field speech sources will be detailed. Applications of spherical harmonic microphone array processing in far field and near field speech data acquisition and beamforming will also be discussed. An overview of the application of these techniques in rendering 3D Audio for Virtual Reality Systems will also be provided.

Bio: Rajesh M. Hegde is a Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. He heads the Multimedia Information Processing Systems Lab and Wireless Sensor Networks Lab at IIT Kanpur. He was also a P. K. Kelkar Research Fellow in the same department from 2009-2012. He holds a Ph.D in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Madras . His current areas of research interest include multi-media signal processing, multi-microphone speech processing, spatial audio processing, pervasive multimedia computing, ICT for socially relevant applications in the Indian context, and applications of signal processing in wireless networks with specific focus on emergency response and transportation applications. He has also worked on NSF funded projects on ICT and mobile applications at the University of California San Diego, USA, where he was a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering between 2005–2008. He has successfully completed several research and development projects both for Government and Industry. He has developed and transferred socially relevant multimedia technologies especially developed for the cell phone to the Industry including BSNL. He was also a member of the National working group of ITU-T (NWG-16) on developing multimedia applications. He has published extensively in reputed journals and served on the program committee of several reputed International conferences.

Harish Krishnaswamy
Columbia

Title: Millimeter-wave Circuit and System Design Slides

Abstract: The 2000s saw the birth of silicon-based millimeter-wave circuits and systems for short-range high-data-rate wireless personal area networks at 60GHz. More recently, interest in millimeter-waves has renewed and exploded due to the interest in vehicular radar and the prospects of millimeter-waves for the next generation of cellular networks (the so-called "5G"). This tutorial will cover circuit and system design at millimeter-waves in silicon-based processes.

Bio: Harish Krishnaswamy received the B.Tech. degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, in 2001, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, USA, in 2003 and 2009, respectively. In 2009, he joined the Electrical Engineering Department, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, where he is currently an Associate Professor.

His research interests broadly span integrated devices, circuits, and systems for a variety of RF, mmWave and sub-mmWave applications.

Dr. Krishnaswamy serves as a member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) of several conferences, including the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (2015/16-present) and IEEE RFIC Symposium (2013-present). He was the recipient of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) Lewis Winner Award for Outstanding Paper in 2007, the Best Thesis in Experimental Research Award from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering in 2009, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award in 2011, a 2014 IBM Faculty Award and the 2015 IEEE RFIC Symposium Best Student Paper Award - 1st Place. He is serving as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE SSCS over 2017-2018.

Srikanth Subramanian
Nanocell Networks

Title: IEEE 802.11ax; Next Gen. High-efficiency WLANs

Abstract: Wi-Fi has made tremendous strides over the past 10 years based on the evolution of IEEE 802.11 standards. Important technologies like OFDM and MIMO have been introduced to the wireless world by 802.11 standards. Impressive growths in rates, features, and ease of use have made Wi-Fi a must across the globe. In this tutorial, we shall start with the motivation for the next generation of standards called as 802.11ax. These include drawbacks in the older generation, competition from LTE-unlicensed and demands of service providers. We will then discuss important technologies being considered and the justifications behind them. Potential research topics and areas for contributions will be highlighted. We will end with a summary of timelines for various wireless standards.

A. Chockalingam
IISc

Title: LIFI, Mirrors and Wireless Communications Slides

Abstract: This tutorial will cover two current topics of research and innovation in wireless communications. The first topic is LiFi (Light Fidelity), a wireless communication paradigm that uses visible light spectrum and white LEDs. The second topic is the role of RF mirrors (digitally controlled parasitic elements) in devising advanced modulation schemes for next generation wireless.

1) LiFi: Wireless communication using visible light wavelengths (400 nm to 700 nm) in indoor LAN environments is fast emerging as an appealing complementary technology to WiFi technology. Maturing solid state lighting technology (using white LEDs) has contributed to this growing interest. A key attraction of visible light communication (VLC) in indoor communication is its potential to simultaneously provide both energy-efficient lighting as well as high-speed, short-range communication using high-luminance LEDs. In VLC, simple and inexpensive LEDs and photo diodes (PD) act as signal transmitters and receptors, respectively, replacing more complex and expensive transmit/receive RF hardware and antennas in RF communication systems (like WiFi). Other favorable aspects in VLC include availability of abundant visible light spectrum at no cost, no licensing issues, and inherent security in closed-room applications. In addition, the potential for simultaneously using multiple LEDs and PDs in MIMO array configurations has enthused MIMO wireless researchers (including the speaker) to take special interest in VLC. The first part of the tutorial will provide an overview of VLC and the associated technological challenges and opportunities.

2) RF Mirrors (Media-based modulation): The use of parasitic elements external to antennas in RF wireless communications is known to have several applications. The parasitic elements include capacitors, varactors or switched capacitors that can adjust the resonance frequency. A widely known application is the use of parasitic elements for beamforming purposes. Other applications include direction of arrival (DoA) estimation, selection/switched diversity, and reconfigurable antennas. A more recent and interesting application is to use digitally controlled parasitic elements for `modulation' purposes. Media-based modulation is such a modulation scheme which has shown significant performance advantage compared to conventional modulation schemes. The second part of this tutorial will introduce media-based modulation and highlight its performance advantages in massive MIMO systems.

Bio: A. Chockalingam received the B.E.(Hons.) degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from P.S.G. College of Technology, Coimbatore, in 1984 and the M.Tech degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from IIT, Kharaghpur, in 1985. In 1993, he obtained the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Communication Engineering from IISc, Bangalore. He was a Post doctoral fellow in UC San Diego from Dec-1993 to Nov-1995. From Dec-1995 to May-1996, he worked as Assistant Project Scientist at UC San Diego. He worked as Staff Engineer/Manager at Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego. Currently, he is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

AFTERNOON SESSIONS:

Mitesh M. Khapra
IIT Madras

Title: Deep Learning Slides

Abstract: In this tutorial we will look at a brief history of Deep Learning starting from early 19th century all the way upto very recent success stories. We will then delve deep into the training algorithms used for Deep Learning such as Gradient Descent, Momentum Based Gradient Descent, Adam, AdaGrad and their variations. We will then discuss some practical tips for training deep neural networks focusing on different activation functions, weight initialization strategies and regularization methods. If time permits we will talk about some of the recent successes of Deep Convolution Networks in various Image Processing Tasks.

Bio: Mitesh M Khapra has recently joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras as an Assistant Professor. While at IIT Madras he plans to pursue his interests in the areas of Deep Learning, Multimodal Multilingual Processing, Natural Language Generation and Question Answering. Prior to that he worked as a Researcher at IBM Research India. During the four and half years that he spent at IBM he worked on several interesting problems in the areas of Statistical Machine Translation, Cross Language Learning, Multimodal Learning, Argument Mining and Deep Learning. This work led to publications in top conferences in the areas of Computational Linguistics and Machine Learning. Prior to joining IBM, he completed his PhD and M.Tech from IIT Bombay in Jan 2012 and July 2008 respectively. His Ph.D. thesis dealt with the important problem of reusing resources for multilingual computation.

Kumar Appaiah
IIT Bombay

Title: Spatial Multiplexing in Multimode Fiber Links Slides

Abstract: With the increasing bandwidth requirements in optical fiber links, the conventional techniques, conventional techniques for increasing the data rate have diminshing returns. Recent research has shown that the use of multimode fibers to send multiple signals through a single fiber is a promising approach to increasing the data rates. Using the fact that the multiplicity of modes in the fiber provide orthogonal channels within the same fiber, we will discuss some of the approaches that can be used to send several signals through the same fiber, much like the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission in wireless channels. Some of the topics that we intend covering include the use of large-core and few-mode fibers, offset coupling to enhance fiber bandwidth and the use of signal processing to for signal quality enhancement.

Bio: Kumar Appaiah received the B.Tech. and M.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India in 2008, and the Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA. From 2013 to 2014, he was a Senior Engineer with Qualcomm Flarion Technologies, Bridgewater, NJ, USA. Since 2014, he has been an Assitant Professor of Electrical Engineering in IIT Bombay, Mumbai. His research interests include signal processing for optical communication and multiplexing in wireless and fiber optic communication systems.

Uday Khankhoje
IIT Madras

Title: Computational Electromagnetics and Remote Sensing Slides

Abstract: In this tutorial we will explore the use of microwave synthetic aperture radars (SAR) for observing the Earth. This allows us to monitor natural resources, such as forest cover, soil moisture, ocean salinity, or even centimetre scale deformations of the Earth's surface. We will discuss electromagnetic scattering from various natural features such as randomly rough surfaces and vegetation, highlighting the computational aspects. We will then study techniques by which radar observations can be decomposed into constituent components such as surface and canopy contributions, allowing us to focus on the objects of our interest. Applications of SAR to various problems of societal interest will be shown. All these problems assume significance and offer tremendous opportunities in the context of an upcoming SAR mission, "NISAR", between ISRO and NASA that aims to study the Earth's surface using L and S-band SAR.

Bio: Uday Khankhoje is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India, since 2016. He received a B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India, in 2005, an M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, USA, in 2010, all in Electrical Engineering. He was a Caltech Postdoctoral Scholar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA/Caltech) from 2011-2012, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA, from 2012-2013, and an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi from 2013-2016. His research interests are in the area of computational electromagnetics and its applications to remote sensing and inverse imaging.

Amod Anandkumar

Tabrez Khan

Tabrez Khan

Amod Anandkumar & Tabrez Khan
Mathworks

Title: Hands-On Tutorial – Prototyping MATLAB & Simulink models on DSPs, FPGAs, and SDRs

Abstract: The development of signal processing, communications, and computer vision systems can be a time-consuming and costly undertaking, with a significant proportion of the effort invested in hardware implementation and verification. MATLAB and Simulink provide an integrated design flow from algorithm design to implementation on embedded hardware using automatic C and HDL code generation. This hands-on tutorial provides an introduction to the workflows for C & HDL code generation from MATLAB algorithms and Simulink models for prototyping on DSPs, FPGAs and SDRs. Participants will be provided trial licenses for MATLAB and relevant products prior to the event.

Bios:

Amod Anandkumar is the Team Lead for Signal Processing and Communications Application Engineering at MathWorks India. Prior to this, he was a Lead Engineer with the Advanced Technology Group at Samsung Research India, Noida for 1.5 years where he developed physical layer techniques for LTE wireless communication systems and novel healthcare applications for smartphones. He was also a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Biomedical Signal Analysis Lab, GE Global Research Bangalore working on advanced beamforming techniques for ultrasound imaging and novel signal processing solutions for ICU patient monitoring systems, resulting in one US patent filing. Amod holds a BTech degree from National Institute of Technology Karnataka and a PhD degree from Loughborough University, UK. His research interests include applied signal processing, next-generation wireless networks, computer vision, game theory, and convex optimization. He has published and reviewed papers in numerous international conferences and journals.

Tabrez Khan is a senior application engineer with MathWorks India specializing in signal processing and communications. He has over 13 years of industry experience and interacts closely with customers to help them use MATLAB products in their signal processing and communication design workflows. Prior to joining MathWorks, Tabrez worked for Cranes Software International Limited as a field AE, handling MathWorks and Lyrtech products. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communications engineering from Kuvempu University and a master’s degree in digital electronics and communication from Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), Karnataka.

Welcome to NCC 2017